Kelly, with his wife Kit and daughter Louisa, moved into their Carteret Street home in the fall of 1987. In 1990 the EPA announced a draft decision to leave radium contamination on his property along with more than 300 other properties in Glen Ridge, West Orange and Montclair, and impose deed restrictions on those properties. Along with a number of South End neighbors, he helped create The Lorraine Street Committee for a Radium Free Glen Ridge. Over 12 years he served on the Lorraine Street Committee working with Mayors Callahan, Bourne, Lincoln and Plate, as well as our representation in Washington, seeing through the total remediation and restoration of the affected communities. During that time he was invited by then-Councilman Steve Plate to join the Planning Board where he is now the current Chairman. He helped re-establish The Glen Ridge Democratic Club, serving two years as its president. He served as a delegate to the CCC from the Democratic Club, working on the rules committee with Yvonne Provost, among others. Most recently he worked with Bob Salvatelli and Councilman Paul Lisovicz on The Mayor’s Advisory Committee on Parks and Fields. As an active trustee on the board of New Jersey Policy Perspective, he has written an editorial published in the New Jersey section of The New York Times in support of minimum wage legislation and has testified before State Legislative committees on behalf of that legislation and Family Leave legislation. Both measures are now law. He and Kit own and operate Foley-Waite Associates Inc., an architectural wood working company established in 1978. His daughter Louisa attended Glen Ridge schools from pre-K through High School, graduating with honors from Johns Hopkins University in 2006.Goals:
Through public service as a member of Glen Ridge Borough Council, to establish a standard of conducting the business of the municipality with full transparency, complete accountability and good humor; to encourage, through direct action as a Council member, greater public awareness of the need for volunteer participation in municipal governance; to join with Mayor Peter Hughes in promoting Glen Ridge as an example of highly efficient municipal government, in the emerging debate over the viability of small town New Jersey; and with the Mayor and other members of the Borough Council, to strengthen the close working relationship with county and state representatives.
1 comment:
I am finding your statements interesting. I would say that the current behavior of borough staff is anything but good-humored and accountable. We have been involved in the recent dispute over assessments performed by the town that were totally bogus. According to our expert, they overestimated the value of our house by 25%. We won something of an adjustment at the tax board--and now they are appealing this to the Tax Court in Trenton. According to my friends in the business, this is unheard of. Beyond that, the behavior of borough staff during the past hearings was rude and totally lacking in accountability. They refused to correct obvious, demonstrable mistakes in the assessments and even suggested that having a 24-hour train service visible--and audible--from your bedroom window actually increases the value of your home. We suspect that the borough chose to appeal the cases of those families not represented by a lawyer and we are mad as hell.
If this is the kind of issue that you want to fight, I am very anxious to get with you. I am a former professional writer and current expert on Internet interactivity--I spoke at the online journalism association conference last year. I also have several friends who feel just as I do and we stand ready to go both door to door and site to site to support anyone who would correct this kind of outrage. I am not much on what seems to me nothing more than an attempt to bully us into accepting their ridiculously flawed assessment. I have every intention of getting in their face right back. I also want to see some form of civility in contact with putative public servants. Interested?
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